SOMETHING IN THE AIR

IRS targeting brings tea party back from dead

Organizers mobilizing for demonstrations Tuesday at agency buildings

A swelling crowd at the Nashville Federal Court House Tuesday protests the IRS targeting of conservative groups (Courtesy WKRN-TV, Nashville)

Prompted by the admission by the Internal Revenue Service that tea-party groups and other conservative organizations seeking non-profit, tax-exempt status were targets of discrimination, the tea-party movement is mobilizing like-minded citizens to hold demonstrations in front of IRS buildings across the nation at noon, local time, Tuesday.

“I’ll bet this is gonna be huge,” said talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh on his show Monday. “It’s entirely possible that people are going to see once again just how big and how deep the tea party is.”

In the “talking points” of its protest tool kit, Tea Party Patriots charges the IRS has been dishonest and unwilling to exercise accountability.

The Inspector General’s report, the group notes, found that the IRS began targeting organizations with the word “patriot” or “tea party” in their names in February 2010.

The issue was confronted in a 2011 hearing by the House Ways & Means Committee, but the IRS commissioner insisted no targeting was taking place, even though he had been briefed about the agency’s practice of denying or delaying the applications of conservative groups.

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller testified before the same committee May 17 and denied there was any political agenda or any significant wrong-doing.

But Tea Party Patriots says that as a result of the IRS’ illegal activities, many of Tea Party Patriots’ local branches were unable to raise funds, and the national group lost membership and donors.

The IRS policy has had a “chilling effect,” Tea Party Patriots says. Dozens of its state coordinators have said that they were too afraid to submit their applications after they learned about what other groups were experiencing.

The group says it understands, through experience, the old adage that the “power to tax is the power to destroy.”

“The Internal Revenue Services is, perhaps, one of the most feared government agencies because of its immense power to audit and repossess people’s assets,” the group says. “The American public has the right to expect their tax laws to be enforced in a transparent and equal way, irrespective of the individual’s personal convictions or group memberships and associations.”

Meanwhile, Politico reports the White House has changed its explanation of the IRS scandal day by day.

On Monday, it once again added to the list of people who knew about the IRS investigation, saying White House chief of staff Denis McDonough had been informed about a month ago.

ABC News reports reporters covering the scandal are being stonewalled and escorted by police in public IRS buildings.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, in an interview with the Fox News Channel’s Greta Van Susteren Friday night, accused President Obama of having “built up an atmosphere of guerrilla warfare” that created fertile ground for the scandals now roiling his administration.

“This is the problem with this entire situation [with the AP], with the IRS, with Benghazi: you have all these situations — all these unprecedented scandals — yet the president knows nothing about it,” Priebus said.

Will the IRS' targeting of the tea party revive the movement?

No, the tea party was just a bunch of racist Huckleberrys, and their time has passed

No, it was a one-time, right-wing, astroturf movement

No, there was never any heart in the tea-party movement to sustain it

No, nothing can revive the movement now

No, it's been corrupted and plagued with infighting. Grassroots Americans no longer want a part of it

Ask the Koch brothers. They financed the first one

I sure hope so. This is the most important movement of a generation

Yes, but it will only be short lived

Yes, as long as there are taxes, there will be a tea party

Yes, but next time Obama will use high-power fire hoses and billy clubs on the little old ladies in the tea-party movement

Yes, this is the straw that broke the camel's back. America has finally awakened

Yes, it's coming back bigger and stronger

Yes, what a great irony: In trying to destroy the tea party, the IRS gave it new life